This blog presents news items and resources relating to trial advocacy and the legal system, with a focus on Washington State. It was developed to support the Trial Advocacy Program at the University of Washington School of Law, but now has a broader coverage and a wider audience. In addition to information about trials and trial practice, you'll find notes about appellate practice, the courts, access to justice, and related topics.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

The new EW-DOCS database on Westlaw contains documents from expert witnesses filed in the state and federal trial courts throughout the United States. A document is an expert report, affidavit, deposition, or trial transcript.

The template search provides a search box for key words and phrases along with fields for the expert's field, type of case, party for whom the expert testified, federal and/or state courts, and jurisdiction.

I tried some sample searches. It's interesting to see the range of material -- for instance, in Washington I looked at an economist's analysis of the wine distribution industry and an engineer's statement about how seatbelts functioned in an accident --and how an expert's affidavit is structured.